India, Sept. 11 -- It's easy to dismiss pickleball as an unserious sport. The kind that privileged people play in hot-pink skorts and polo shirts at a bougie gymkhana. This might just be a branding problem. We've mostly seen the game paired with sundowner pop-ups and cocktail evenings, packaged as a trendy offline activity for a generation tired of doomscrolling. It reaches most people as a fun first date, a Sunday pastime, a flavour of the moment, much like mahjong. Harsh Mehta sees something bigger.

At 28, he plays pickleball full time. And, as India's first captain, Mehta just headed the senior national squad at The Pickleball World Cup 2026 in Da Nang, Vietnam last week. Some 64 countries participated. Mehta, who is known as The Wall...